Hey guys, I am actually in the process of writing a book on plant-lore, and one of my sources is an academic article that directly quotes from obscure ancient Greek passages and phrases and I am having some difficulty translating a passage. Currently, I am having trouble with portions of this phrase: Mἡ σπεῦδ’, Aχλλεῦ, πρὶν Mονηνίαν έλεῖν· ὕδωρ γὰρ οὐκ ἒνεοτι· διψῶσιν κακῶς the first part of which is “Don’t hasten Achilles.”
Hi, check out page 148 here, which has the text (with typos corrected) as well as an English translation and background context:
https://dokumen.pub/the-hesiodic-catalogue-of-women-and-archaic-greece-9781107035195-1107035198.html
This is a pair of iambic trimeters.
Cheers, Chad
I don’t know what this has to do with plant lore, unless it’s the fact that there’s an apple or quince (μῆλον) in the story—clearly a love token, cf. Acontius and Cydippe in addition to Atalante.
I’m on hotel internet and unfortunately couldn’t download a pdf just to look up the original text. So here it is from TLG.
(207) Schol. AD Homer Ζ 35: Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπὸ τὸν Τρωικὸν πόλεμον πορ-
θῶν τὰς περιοίκους τῆς Ἰλίου πόλεις ἀφίκετο εἰς τὴν πάλαι μὲν Μονηνίαν, νῦν
δὲ Πήδασον καλουμένην, καὶ αὐτὴν σὺν ταῖς ἄλλαις <ἐπειρᾶτο> ἑλεῖν. ἀπογνόν-
τος δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν εἰς τὸ τέλος πολιορκίαν διὰ τὴν ὀχυρότητα τοῦ τόπου καὶ μέλ-
λοντος ἀναχωρεῖν, φασὶν εἴσω τῶν τειχῶν οὖσάν τινα παρθένον ἐρασθῆναι τοῦ (5)
Ἀχιλλέως καὶ λαβοῦσαν μῆλον εἰς τοῦτο ἐπιγράψαι καὶ ῥῖψαι εἰς μέσον τῶν
Ἀχαιῶν. ἦν δὲ ἐν αὐτῷ γεγραμμένον:
μὴ σπεῦδ’, Ἀχιλλεῦ, πρὶν Μονηνίαν ἑλεῖν·
ὕδωρ γὰρ οὐκ ἔνεστι· διψῶσιν κακῶς.
τὸν δὲ Ἀχιλλέα ἐπιμείναντα οὕτω λαβεῖν τὴν πόλιν τῇ τοῦ ὕδατος σπάνει. ἡ ἱστο- (10)
ρία παρὰ Δημητρίῳ καὶ Ἡσιόδῳ (fr. 85 Rzach3).
That’s a lot to write on an apple. There is no way εἰς τοῦτο means inside here? Didn’t Herodotus have a story about notes being passed inside of a carcass?
This is a somewhat misogynistic topos: young women betray their city or their father when they fall in love with the enemy: Medea, Ariadne, Scylla; also Roman Tarpeia, for money, not love. There are probably more.
The story (ἱστορία) is from the curious work known as the Mythographus Homericus, triggered by a Homeric mention of the city of Pedasos (olim Monenia). A girl—the king’s daughter, at a guess—betrays the city to Achilles who was about to give up the siege.
(The idea that she inscribed her message inside the apple is a hilarious rationalization.)
Hilarious, maybe, but I think the original version of the story. Look again more carefully at the clear double meaning that υδωρ γαρ ουκ ενεστι could take. No, not inscribed into the inside, but a note on some other material set into the hollowed out fruit or gourd.
Also notice that if the story is at heart a tradition about a dried out gourd somehow communicating a city’s drought condition, then the girl is just a plot vehicle, a necessary incident instead of an archetype.